Fuel Cell In, 4-Link coming together

At this point they’ve got the cover over the diff fab’d up. The diff arrived and they’ve got much of the 4-link complete, and the fuel cell is securely in it’s home with a fab’d cover over and hinged lid over it.

In the meantime I’ve been working on getting the race motor together. We’re going to have the crank welded up and offset ground to destroke 2mm so that we can bore the block over 1mm to clean up the bores and to deshroud the valves. The head porting is nearly complete and I’m very optimistic about the results, sounds like we’re getting 325 CFM on the intake ports and mid-high 200’s on the exhaust which is more than we set out for. We working with Schnieder Cams on a custom profile to meet our needs, and as soon as the head gets back here it’s going out to Carillo so they can 3D map the combustion chambers and see how much piston they can stuff in there to get the compression as close to 14:1 as possible. If all this goes smoothly we’ll have our full effort race motor together for SW2012. If we have some hangups we’ll have to make a compromise here or there (like running lower compression off the shelf pistons, maybe in the 11:1 range). We had a local company prep the block but I’m not happy with the work, so it’s going down to my favorite machine shop (where it should have gone to start with) to be tanked, checked over, bored, honed, etc very soon. Once the pieces are all here it won’t take long at all to have it together.

In the meantime we’re also sorting out shocks/coilovers and should have those soon, then we can put the car on the ground, final few tweaks, and then it’s time to wire and fire it, install fire systems, window nets, etc. Once all of that is sorted we’ll strip it all back down, have it prepped and painted, and then put it all back together, and God willing….. make it to Speed Week on time. Our work is cut out for us.

Here are the latest pics of the current state of things….

Fuel cell recent progress:

Diff and Axles showed up: This is one serious GM 8.5″ 10-bolt here. 2.73:1 ratio. REM/Superfinished and cryo’d internals. Full Spool. Supposedly good for 1500whp so long as I don’t launch it hard on sticky tires and asphalt. So long as I keep it on the salt it should last for a long time, and for several powerplants…

Four Link: Just starting to see real progress on this, the passenger side is all but complete and finishing up the drivers side.

Diff Hump and Driveshaft Cover

Push bar receiver and parachute tether

That’s it for now. It sure does take a lot of time and effort to build a car of this caliber… but it’s going to be TOTALLY worth it, and a total blast. Stay tuned for another update soon!